Guest post: Setting minds at easel

To make up for such an execrably long period of silence, as mentioned in yesterday's vlog, I'm offering something new today: a guest post! Elizabeth Henry, our Electronic Resources/Instruction & Reference Librarian, had the brainwave a few weeks ago of putting up easels with large blank pads of paper and inviting people to write on them with comments about the Library. They were placed at various locations around the building, and we got quite the response!

She's written up a summary of what people had to say, as well as our responses to it all. It's very interesting reading!

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Hi everyone! Remember those easels that we set up with those big pads so you could write comments about the Library? The easels had three questions total, which were:

• I visit the Library because…
• I like the Library because…
• I wish the Library had…

We were thrilled to see the large number of responses! We felt it was only appropriate to give you a summary of what everyone had to say; after all, you took the time to write your thoughts!

We were glad to hear that people like to visit the Library because it’s a quiet place to study and work on assignments. There’s plenty of space here! Of course, a nice bonus is being able to bring in food and drinks to enjoy while studying -- totally understandable! I enjoy drinking and eating while reading too.

We were also pleased to see that our support for Gallaudet’s students, faculty and staff is appreciated as well! We are always more than happy to help where we can. All you have to do is come in, e-mail us, or use the chat widget on our home page -- we’re here for you!

Now, down to the nitty-gritty: How can the Library improve?

First, some people wanted longer checkout periods, maybe up to a full semester. That’s understandable. But did you know you can already have a book for an entire semester? How you ask? All you have to do is renew your books! You can do it up to three times. Our shortest borrowing period for books is up to four weeks, and if you renew it 3 times, then you can have a book for another 12 weeks for a total of 16 weeks. That’s an entire semester right there!

We set it up that way because we’re a Library -- people like to check out books from us! So we like to try to make sure that the books are available to everyone within a reasonable time. Yes, I know, it can be a pain in the neck to have to renew a book over and over, but if someone else had a book you wanted, then you’d want a fair chance at it, wouldn’t you? By the same token, if you find a book you need for class, but it's checked out to someone else and doesn't look likely to come back soon, you can ask us to place a hold on it. When that happens, the other person with the book will bring it back instead of renewing it, so you'll have a chance to use the book, too. For more information on this, just ask at the Service Desk any time!

Other people asked for more computers, and we are working on it! We are aware that there are a few issues involved with the computers, such as the long log-in times you’ll sometimes experience on our computers, plus there can be such high demand that there’s nary an available computer to be found when you visit the Library. But the good news is that we’ll be replacing many of our public computers this summer! Also, we’re looking into improving our wireless Internet signal in the basement so students with their own laptops can be more flexible in where they work.

Many people mentioned how gloomy the Library can be! Yes, we know -- the basement can get dark! Every summer, we check all the study desks in the basement to make sure the bulbs are working, and do our best to replace any burned-out bulbs both there and in the rest of the Library. Still, bulbs don’t die on schedule! If you see one and it’s causing a problem with visibility, just let someone at the Service Desk know which light needs to be replaced and we’ll happily report the problem to be taken care of as soon as possible.

Another thing we noticed is that there seems to be a lot of people who love coffee! We got a lot of requests for free coffee to be provided all semester long, or at the very least a café in the Library building.

To be frank -- I need my caffeine fix myself too! I love to get my caffeine fix by drinking mochas. Mmm! -- the truth is, I can’t figure out where we can put a café in this building, as much as I’d love one! As for providing free coffee all semester, that does sound like a pretty nice idea, but that can take a lot of money. So what we do instead is that we target the most important parts of the semester -- midterms and the last week of classes! We know our statistics really shoot up during those times of the semester, and we know students’ stress levels do too, so we try to make the coffee available when it’ll do the most good. Some people have also asked for alternatives, like tea and hot chocolate, which we think is a great idea. We’ll let you know if that suggestion will become a reality!

As for the leaks, yeah. We know about the leaks. We’ve been working on them since the day the Library opened; although they’re a fact of life, we won’t stop until they’ve been eradicated. Lots of people also had suggestions about how to improve the general feel of the building -- the color scheme, the smell, and the furniture. We’re taking all those suggestions very seriously and are already kicking around a few ideas that might see some new things in the Library this Fall!

We also noticed an odd issue with this building … vampires? Ghosts? Really? Well, I’m not so sure about the vampires, but ghosts … well, now that’s definitely a possibility. If you see any, please let me know. I’m curious about which areas they usually haunt…!

Again, we really appreciate all of the responses we got. One person actually filled two or three big pages with all of her reasons for coming in to the Library, while others had a little fun. Did you know that the word "Library" spelled backwards, is y-r-a-r-b-i-l? Some of our librarians had a hard time figuring that out! There also plenty of useful comments, concerns, ideas and suggestions on top of it all.

So we want to thank everyone who participated and had their say. You’ve been heard and listened to.

Have a great summer!

Vlog review of Infinite Jest

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

Vlog review of The End of Overeating

The End of Overeating by David Kessler, M.D.

Amazons shifting into OverDrive

This might be a little bit overdue, but lots of other things have been happening, so please bear with me.

For a little background, read this article that I ganked off our Facebook page.

As news go, this is pretty far-out. In summary, Amazon's agreed to make it possible for people to borrow e-books from their local library on their Kindles. They've partnered with OverDrive, a major vendor for lendable e-books to accomplish this.

For a variety of reasons, most of which are known only to them, Amazon has historically been resistant to the idea of e-book lending. That's why, for instance, when I talked about EBL last month, I had to note that it didn't work on the Kindle. Ditto OverDrive, which I wrote about the month before that (I seem to be turning into quite the e-book blogger).

Up until this deal came along, it was a truism that if a library made e-books available for lending, those books would not be Kindle books. It's sort of a format-war thing -- VHS and Betamax, DVD and LaserDisc, HD DVD and Blu-Ray, Microsoft and Apple, Kindle and ePub.

ePub is the other format that's most widely used to disseminate e-books. It's readable on a large variety of devices and can be distributed with digital rights management (DRM) software baked into the e-book so that it either can't be copied, or can remove itself from the user's device after the borrowing period expires.

There are just two problems with ePub, a general one and a specific one.

First, the general one. The ePub format is an open standard, so it suffers from what I call the "Android Syndrome."

If you're not familiar with this, some background: Android -- the smartphone operating system created and distributed by Google -- is an open standard, meaning it's free for anyone to modify to their heart's content. Predictably, this has led to a huge variety of personalized versions of Android, depending on what phone company you use, what kind of smartphone you have, which third-party software developer you particularly like, or your own personal taste.

This means that when Google releases newer, faster, and better basic versions of Android, millions of people miss out because:

• The particular type of Android they have on their phones doesn't play nice with the new stuff.
• Their phone company is too slow to release a new version of their personalized Android that works with the new stuff.
• The smartphone they happen to have just doesn't have the hardware necessary to run the new stuff.

It becomes a self-perpetuating cycle, because when people run into any of the three problems listed above, their only option to upgrade their phone is generally to break their phone company's hold on it and find a third-party developer who's created a better version of Android that's suited to their equipment and needs. And we wind up with an Android that's been fragmented into a million pieces.

In ePub's case (back to the point!), as an open standard, it doesn't require or enforce a specific digital-rights mechanism, which means it may become difficult for a given device or app to support all the possible forms of DRM applied to different e-books, leading to a fragmentation of usability. This is still a relatively small concern -- ePub isn't all that old as standards go -- but then it was also a small concern in the early days of Android. Still, most public libraries use large e-book vendors, like OverDrive, that require that users download a specific app or use a specific format in order to read their e-books, which makes the DRM consideration a pretty small one!

So that's the general problem with ePub, which really isn't much of one these days, despite the lengthy exposition!

The specific problem with ePub is just that they're unreadable on the Kindle. Sigh ... and the war goes on.

In general, the Amazon-OverDrive deal seems to be a good thing for libraries. A lot of kinks still need to be ironed out -- how much control will libraries have over their Kindle e-books? Will they have to pay again for a Kindle copy, even if they already have an ePub version from the same vendor? -- but there's cautious optimism about the implications for libraries that are facing the growth of e-books.

It's certainly made us sit up and take notice here at the Gallaudet University Library, but we have to admit to being uncertain that there actually are all that many people on campus -- or off, in the case of our online students -- who would use a mobile device to read one of our e-books. Working with EBL will help us learn a little more about whether or not that feature gets used, but we also don't know how many people own Kindles, for instance, as opposed to Nooks or Sony Readers.

Or would more people use their devices for this purpose after the e-books became available?

It's kind of a funny little dilemma. Either way, we're still buying e-books and they are still being used, even in the current, relatively-limited format that's available.

One way we could get around this is to get feedback. If you're reading this and you use a device of some kindto read e-books, let me know! Just e-mail me at james.mccarthy@gallaudet.edu and let me know what device you use to read e-books and your thoughts on whether or not the Library should start thinking about stuff like OverDrive and its Kindle e-books.

We may also do a survey about it over the summer, depending on how quiet it is here. Nevertheless, you can still expect to hear more about it in the coming months ...

Vlog review of Swamplandia!

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell.

A peek behind the scenes

This week, I thought I'd do something a little different: bore you out of your minds!

I'm just kidding. Or am I? It depends on whether or not you think librarian work is interesting in any way whatsoever.

I've been working on a number of things this week, but this morning was fairly quiet, so I took the opportunity to do some weeding. We need to clear out some space in the collection in general, and it's a great opportunity to trim the fat of old, unnecessary or unused books in order to make way for new and more useful ones! But this time, I brought along a camera.

You get to come along and see a little bit of what we do! Revealing photos and all. I just wish National Geographic saw us for the feral entities we are; taking pictures and weeding, like walking and chewing gum, are not two activities that go together well. Still, the truth must be told!

Here's the basic equipment I use (click to enlarge):


Book cart, laptop with our circulation system up and running, barcode scanner. Obscured in this photo: The most recent issue of American Libraries I'm using to cushion the laptop on the metal cart!

A lot of times, when you're combing the collection, you'll usually find an oddity or two:

Not a bad idea, right? But there are a number of issues with this book. First, it's fairly out of context with the section it's in; we're looking at the study of linguistics, after all. However, it's multilingual and kind of weird, so it ended up in 413, which is for specialized and/or polyglot dictionaries -- of which we don't actually have many. Most of our foreign-language dictionaries are for specific languages and are fairly pedestrian, so end up higher in the 400s. Another issue is just that it's old. There are no drawings of computers, for instance, but there are plenty for things that simply don't exist anymore.

Plus the fact that the spine has been taped up -- can't miss the tape, it takes up a good portion of the cover -- indicates that it's not in the greatest of conditions. Still another problem is that it's relatively limited in terms of actual translation ability. If you're relying on the pictures, for instance, how do you convey that you're looking for a library if there's no textual translation of a "LIBRARY" sign on a drawing of a building? How do you get around that without making someone think you're looking for a decent bookcase? Or a policeman, who may be wearing a different uniform from the one depicted? And what really bothers me is the picture in the lower right-hand corner. What is that?

Let's look inside.

Hmm. This is interesting and might actually be pretty useful. Then you hit the watering-can thing in the bottom-middle row on the right-hand page. Why does one need to water one's flowers when one is traveling in a foreign country? Or is it a coffee pot of some kind? What's that thing floating in midair next to it? Or the upper right-hand corner -- is it true that American tourists were once in the habit of accosting strangers for their keys? Or the drawing of the parking lot just below that one; the symbol "P" doesn't necessarily denote "parking" in every language.

This leads to another limitation: more than the fact that only four European languages are represented here, a good deal of these drawings display a Western bias. I have to wonder if, say, a rural Cambodian knows what a garage is.

Either way, it's taking up space in the collection. Don't worry, we didn't spend a lot of money on it:

It's a donation. Historically, the Gallaudet University Library has been lucky enough to benefit from the largess of University students, staff, faculty, and alumni, as well as local community figures, and continues to do so; because of this, a pretty significant portion of the collection has come from private libraries over the decades. Although this particular case does not mean, in any way, that we're less attached to donated books than ones we purchase, it does mean that our collection is full of truly random things that may not have been added to the collection with strict utility in mind.

But all of this is really just my own evaluation of the book as a librarian. Let's see if it's backed up by our circulation records:
Lasers from space! And on the laptop, we see ...
This is the dirt: the history of the item since the record was entered into our system, which was August 2, 1997. No last transaction listed, which means this book was last checked out at some point before 1997. Actually probably long before 1997; when we switched over to electronic, every effort was made to enter information about the book's history before then, so if there was a card in the back of the book with stamps indicating that it had been checked out, that information would probably have made it into this window (and no, we don't keep any more information than that; we don't keep data on who borrowed what, just on whether or not the book was borrowed at all). There's been zero activity on this book in at least 14 years. Toss!

It's not easy to find books like the picture dictionary, though, that are so clearly out of step with the collection and which haven't been used at all since we began keeping electronic records. Some books that we weed have been used, but not enough to justify their place within the collection, and especially considering how misleading they can be sometimes. For instance, take a look at this one:

Current approaches! Pretty nice; it's always useful to get up-to-date information on the state of the field. But then you look at the call number label:

Sure was nice of a former staffer to point out the important information. This book is three decades out of date! I can see why it's still here in the collection, though; it probably provides a useful look at the state of phonological theory as of 1979, which might be good for historical research. However, one important aspect of weeding is knowledge and understanding of the academic departments involved and the ability to keep their needs in mind. And not a whole lot of research into the history of linguistics itself goes on here; we do have much more recent historical overviews that include this date, as well as the perspective that comes with hindsight. Toss!

I'm not going to take pictures of each and every book I took, so we'll skip right to the end:

I have to admit to feeling a certain kind of thrill when I see a large set of books that are clearly outdated, irrelevant, and unused, like -- and I'm male, so forgive my color sense -- the mauve-ish set of books in the middle of the second shelf from the top. Toss!

In any case, the process you've seen here gets repeated anywhere from 75 to 150 times per cart, depending on the size of each book. With that in mind, it may not surprise you that some books have been on our shelves for a very long time -- some for a century or so -- and with a collection as large as ours, it can take a long time to get through with weeding.

Long enough, in fact, that by the time we've finished weeding, we've added enough new books in the meantime to require that we start over again as soon as we're done!

It's moments like this that I realize that our collection -- library collections in general, all over the world -- are dynamic, living things. They grow, shrink, and change according to the nature of the times and the people who manage them. In times like these, I wish we had a book: The Care and Feeding of Library Collections.

Vlog review of Everything Matters!

Everything Matters! by Ron Currie.

Tips on using the Library

The semester's beginning to wind down, which means the Library's really beginning to gear up!

We see our heaviest activity at six times in the academic year, three in each semester: the beginning, midterms, and the end. Students start off being very serious about knuckling down to do their work, then that seriousness sort of peters out after the first couple of weeks. When midterms roll around, though, you can bet all the local grindstones are full to their utmost surface nasal capacity. Once that's over, relief lets them focus on other things ... until finals come along, then it's a flurry of activity, and all of our computers and study tables are occupied. It's a nicely predictable pattern and it lets us plan our bigger projects around peak times.

What that means right now is that we're preparing for the onrush, with finals only three weeks away. Although we're certainly still working on big things -- the weeding of the collection continues apace, as do our plans for reconfiguring some of the Library space, as well as planning for next Fall -- at this time of the semester, helping students keeps us on our feet all the time.

We're already seeing the demand beginning to pile up. Our computers are consistently maxing out their capacity, the printers are always going, and study tables are occupied most of the time. With that in mind, I thought I'd offer a few tips on using the Library!

Why? It's important. More than anything else, the Library is a shared resource, and although we certainly have a lot here, it's also finite. Following these tips will help make sure everyone gets a chance to use what we offer with a minimum of stress and annoyance.

Here goes ...

1) Lockers, we have them.
Sometimes people are surprised to find out that the lockers by both restrooms on the first floor are available for use. They are! You can check out a key from the Service Desk and use it all day to stash your things. It cuts down on backaches as you traipse around the Library and campus.

2) You can bring your own computers.
We offer free wireless Internet access to all Gallaudet students, staff, and faculty members. This means waiting around for a public computer to open up can be a thing of the past! Just bring in your laptops and plug them in. Which leads us to ...

3) Power outlets. Lots of them.
We have power strips underneath all our round study tables. They're always on and are available to take your laptop cords and smartphone chargers! Many of our smaller study tables have power outlets of their own, too! This, in turn leads us to ...

4) Let there be light.
Many people don't know that our smaller study tables -- like the ones that line the big windows around our first floor -- come with their own lights! You can flip them on and focus on your work without straining your eyes every time a cloud passes over the sun.

5) Nooks and crannies.
Our most heavily-used study space is also our most visible and easy to find. However, some students don't like the feeling of exposure and the distractions that come with being out in the open where you can see everything that's going on. That's okay -- just head downstairs! We have lots of quiet study space in the basement that's tucked away in little corners throughout the stacks. My personal favorite is the alcove in the 800s; big windows, nice views, comfortable chairs, and hidden by a wall of good books!

6) We understand stress.
We get it, really we do. One way you can unwind after a few hours of studying or writing is to head up to the Deaf Library Study Center. You can either check out a fun flick and watch it there, or take advantage of our cable subscription for a little while! Or maybe you just want to grab a few winks. Run up to the first floor, drop your things off at your locker, then find a couch somewhere and snooze ...

7) At least, until you're hungry.
Our vending machines offer a lot of sugary things to help give you that midafternoon jolt you need to get back to work. What? Most of you are college students. You're too young to need tofu and prune juice.

8) Make friends with the natives.
When you're going to spend a lot of time in the Library, it pays to get social with the librarians. I know -- we are a proud race and intimidating with our big brains. But consider this: if you've been in here a lot and have checked out books or asked for help, we probably already know your name and remember what you're working on based on our previous interactions. Talking with us a little bit will most likely yield some surprising dividends: avenues of investigation you haven't thought of, books you didn't know we had, or insider information on what's on the next new-book cart. We've also discovered that people feel more comfortable with asking us to buy new materials if they know us a little bit. Take advantage and help tailor the collection to your discipline a little more!

Now the last one, which I've reserved because it really unlocks a lot of the Library: The early bird gets the worm. In other words, coming in during off-peak hours will make it easier to get a computer, use the scanner, collect books and DVDs you need, and find a quiet spot to work in. It also means that the librarian on the Service Desk has more time to focus on what you need help with, which is a win all around.

Okay. Now it's time for the biggest secret. Our peak hours are:

9:30 a.m. - 12 p.m.
1 p.m. - 5 p.m.

Do with this information what you will. And enjoy the rest of the semester!

Vlog review of The Late American Novel

The Late American Novel, edited by C. Max Magee and Jeff Martin.

Vlog review of The Word

The Word, edited by Marita Golden.

Find out about our Library Undergraduate Research Paper Award here!